Sitting under a maple tree on our picnic blanket, I watched my wife and kids spitting watermelon seeds into the grass. I’d wanted to forget our financial troubles for the afternoon, but hopelessness weighed me down. A couple months back my eight-year-old daughter Patricia had developed cardiac arrhythmia.

She’d made it through the worst, but without medical insurance, I found myself with a stack of unpaid bills for her lengthy hospital stays. When I wasn’t busy trying to figure a way out of debt, I was too depressed to be much of a husband or father. I leaned back on my elbows and stared up at the cloudless sky.

For the first time I knew what my own father must have felt like when he was diagnosed with cancer. I was around Patricia’s age at the time and didn’t understand why he had withdrawn from us. He seemed so beaten down, just like I felt now. He spent a lot of time in prayer though and eventually got his fight back.

After a solid year of treatment, the cancer went into remission. “Did God answer your prayers?” I asked my father one day. “Yes,” Dad said, “He did. But I wasn’t asking to be cured. I asked for strength to see me through.” He took me in his arms and looked me in the eye. “I needed a second wind and God gave that to me with His own breath.”

Patricia laughed and shot a seed at her brother. I lay my head on the soft picnic blanket and closed my eyes to the sun on my face. My wife ran her fingers through my hair. God, our lives are in your hands. Please give me the strength to see my family through whatever lies ahead. I opened my eyes as a gust of wind stirred the leaves on the tree.

My worries seemed to take flight on that breeze. I grabbed a slice of watermelon and jumped off the blanket. “Hey, kids, now it’s time for you to see a real seed-spitting pro in action!” Since then, things got better, slowly but surely. Patricia has fully recovered and with my new job and the help of friends, we’ve got our bills nearly paid off. But the real answer to my prayers came when God revived me with His breath of fresh air.